The Soviets had a fixation on multi-turret tanks in the 1930's, but they proved difficult to operate in action, as none of the guns was stabilized and the commander had no system to tell him where any of the turrets was pointed at any given time. The competitors for the Soviet heavy tank project to replace the five-turreted T-35 were the single-turreted KV, and the double-turreted SMK and T-100 tanks (the proposal for three turrets was nixed by Stalin, who simply broke one turret off the engineering model and remarked "Why turn a tank into a department store?"). The KV, T-100 and SMK prototypes were battle-tested in Finland, but only the KV was found acceptable. Thus, the KV became the new heavy tank in time for the Great Patriotic War. Gerald Owens